FBI wants to keep fortune in cash, gold, jewels from Beverly Hills raid. Is it abuse of power? By MICHAEL FINNEGAN | LOS ANGELES TIMES EXCLUSIVE JUNE 9, 2021 UPDATED 7:04 AM PT When FBI agents asked for permission to rip hundreds of safe deposit boxes from the walls of a Beverly Hills business and haul them away, U.S. Magistrate Steve Kim set some strict limits on the raid. The business, U.S. Private Vaults, had been charged in a sealed indictment with conspiring to sell drugs and launder money. Its customers had not. So the FBI could seize the boxes themselves, Kim decided, but had to return what was inside to the owners. “This warrant does not authorize a criminal search or seizure of the contents of the safety deposit boxes,” Kim’s March 17 seizure warrant declared. More: https://www.latimes.com/california/...ls-safe-deposit-boxes-forfeiture-cash-jewelry
On this we can agree. Edit, no law enforcement agency should be able to keep any assets without a conviction.
I think they just don't care and think they're above the law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbs_v._Indiana
How dare you question the integrity of this prestigious organization? Wasn't that the daily mantra while they were making up phoney charges against political enemies? These assholes have been abusing power since the fifties. "They think they're above the law". LOL. No shit.
And we also have this recent story involving the FBI... Federal agents admit to falsely accusing Chinese professor of being a spy https://thehill.com/regulation/cour...o-falsely-accusing-chinese-professor-of-being An FBI agent admitted in an ongoing trial to falsely accusing a Chinese-born Tennessee professor of being a Chinese spy, using baseless information to have him placed on the federal no-fly list and spying on him and his son for two years, the Knoxville News Sentinel reported. The newspaper said FBI agent Kujtim Sadiku admitted last week to falsely accusing former University of Tennessee, Knoxville, professor Anming Hu of being a spy. Sadiku also admitted to using the false information to pressure Hu to become a spy for the U.S., the Sentinel reported. No evidence was ever discovered that suggested Hu, an internationally recognized welding technology expert, is a spy. During cross-examination, defense attorney Phil Lomonaco said to Sadiku, "You wanted to find a Chinese spy in Knoxville," making note of the tactics he used to secure a fraud indictment against Hu. "My job is to find spies, yes," the FBI agent responded. During the trial, Sadiku admitted to not knowing the last time Hu was in China. “You’ve been carrying around his passport ... haven’t you?” Lomonaco asked Sadiku. “You know you’re under oath, right?” “I don’t remember the dates on it. ... I wouldn’t rely on that document," Sadiku responded, according to the Sentinel. Lomonaco asked if Sadiku could return Hu's passport. Hu will not receive his passport unless the three wire fraud charges against him are thrown out. During the trial, Sadiku was unable to recall who tipped him off that Hu might be a spy. In 2018, the Department of Justice (DOJ) launched a “China Initiative” that instructed federal agents to ferret out “economic” Chinese spies in the U.S. Chinese professors at American universities quickly became targets of the initiative, the Sentinel noted. Hu is the first professor to stand trial. Sadiku claims that his investigation had nothing to do with the initiative. He claimed that his investigation began with an “open source” search for information on Hu, which turned out to be a Google search on the professor. Sadiku admitted to telling university officials that Hu was a Chinese military operative, despite having no evidence to back up that claim. He never followed up with the officials to clarify that his statements were false, the newspaper noted. U.S. District Judge for the Eastern District of Tennessee Thomas Varlan may rule this week that prosecutors do not have enough evidence to pursue fraud charges against Hu, or he may allow the 12-person jury to decide.
it does not go unnoticed that a libertarian think tank revives this story after the fallout of Maralago https://ij.org/press-release/lawsui...it-boxes-without-charging-owners-with-crimes/ Lawsuit Uncovers the Inside Story of the FBI’s Plans to Take Security Deposit Boxes without Charging Owners with Crimes Newly released court filing demonstrates how feds planned to take property collectively worth more than $100 million from US Private Vaults’ customer LOS ANGELES—When the FBI asked a federal magistrate judge for a warrant to seize the property of US Private Vaults, it concealed critical details about its plan for the hundreds of individually rented security deposit boxes at the Beverly Hills business. Evidence brought to light in a federal class action lawsuit filed by the Institute for Justice (IJ) reveals the previously hidden history of the federal government’s raid, which deliberately violated the constitutional rights of hundreds of people throughout Southern California. “The government has a duty to be honest with the court when it applies for a warrant under the Fourth Amendment,” said IJ Senior Attorney Robert Frommer. “But the FBI lied about its intentions in claiming to only be interested in the property of the business, and not the box holders. Ultimately, the lure of civil forfeiture turned these federal cops into robbers.” For almost five years the government investigated individual customers of US Private Vaults, using the business as (in the words of one agent) a “honey pot” to target customers. However, the government shifted its focus to the company after deciding its initial approach was not “effective.” As part of that shift in focus, in summer 2020 the government started planning to apply for search and seizure warrants against US Private Vaults and its owners. One of those warrants was to seize US Private Vaults’ business property, including the “nest,” a relatively worthless superstructure that held renters’ safe-deposit boxes. When the FBI applied for that seizure warrant in March 2021, its affidavit did not allege that the customers had done anything wrong, and both the FBI and the United States Attorney’s Office swore that agents would merely “inventory” box renters’ property. They promised the warrant would “authorize the seizure of the nests of the boxes themselves, not their contents,” and that agents would pry “no further than necessary to determine ownership.” But the FBI and the United States Attorney’s Office failed to tell the judge that, months before, they and other government agencies had already formulated plans to use civil forfeiture against customers’ property. In fact, before the federal magistrate had even seen the warrant application, FBI officials had concluded they would use civil forfeiture against every asset in every customer’s box that was worth over $5,000. Why $5,000? Because $5,000 is the FBI’s minimum monetary threshold for forfeitures. In other words, the government testified that it planned to seize and administratively forfeit every box renter’s property so long as it thought it would make money on the deal. It planned this despite not knowing who those renters were, what was in their boxes or if they had committed any crimes. “The burden should always be on the government to prove wrongdoing before it can take somebody’s property. The government here just assumed that everything in the boxes worth more than $5,000 was somehow connected to crime,” said IJ Senior Attorney Robert Johnson. “That is a perfect example of how civil forfeiture takes the presumption of innocence and turns it on its head.” When FBI officials marched into US Private Vaults in March 2021, they executed their plan. And to gather more evidence to support their forfeiture efforts, those same FBI officials ignored the seizure warrant’s command that it “does not authorize a criminal search or seizure of the contents of the safety deposit boxes.” Under the warrant, agents were only supposed to “inspect the contents of the boxes”—not to search for potential violations of law, but simply to “identify their owners in order to notify them so that they can claim their property.” But despite its promises to the court, the FBI created custom forms that asked agents to look for information the government could use in pursuing forfeitures. One document, for instance, asked agents to “note things such as how the cash is bundled,” “if it has a strong odor,” or “if there appears to be drug residue.” Another instructed that cash over $5,000 should be sniffed by a “canine unit,” and, in fact, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service arranged for numerous drug dogs to be on site. The government agreed that it gathered this evidence because it “could be probative later on” in showing that the government could forfeit that money or other property. Under the warrant’s terms, agents should have stopped when they encountered letters taped to the top of closed boxes that identified the box’s renter and beneficiaries. Yet invariably agents pored through each box, capturing photographic and video records of renters’ password lists, wills, personal notes and other sensitive documents. Now, the FBI and other agencies have copies of these records in their evidentiary databases, where renters’ private, personal information will remain for agents to access and analyze. In May 2021, the government carried out its plan to commence administrative forfeiture proceedings against hundreds of boxes containing over $80 million in cash and tens of millions more in gold, silver, jewelry and other valuables. That same month, IJ sued the governmentAndrew Wimer Director of Media Relations awimer@ij.org @andrewwimer